Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi (15 August 1948-24 December 2018) was a member of the Iranian Assembly of Experts from 24 February 1999 to 24 December 2018 and Chief Justice of Iran from 30 June 1999 to 30 June 2009 (succeeding Mohammad Yazdi and preceding Sadeq Larijani).

Biography
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was born in Najaf, Iraq in 1948, and he was given a Shia religious education by Ayatollah Khomeini and Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr; he was imprisoned in 1974 due to his involvement with the Islamic Dawa Party. He moved to Iran in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution, and he taught at Qom, instructing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. In 1995, he was elected to the Guardian Council, and then to the Assembly of Experts in 1999. That same year, he became Chief Justice of Iran, and he appointed the fundamentalist Saeed Mortazavi as Prosecutor General of Iran, leading to violent acts against dissidents in the country. In 2011, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had him resolve a dispute between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Parliament, and he quickly became a potential successor of Khamenei as Supreme Leader. In 2018, he died of a brain tumor-induced coma in Tehran.